Slide fasteners are used not only in everyday items such as clothing, bags, footwear, and sundry goods, but also as opening/closing tools in industrial products such as water storage tanks, fishing nets, and spacesuits.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a slide fastener. A slide fastener 10 has three main components: a pair of tape strips 11, elements 12 serving as the engaging parts of the fastener attached to the side edges of both tape strips, and a slider 13 controlling the opening and closing of the fastener by engaging and separating elements 12. In order to keep the slider 13 from sliding off, a top stop 14 and opening device 15 can also be provided. A pull tab 16 can be attached to the surface of the slider 13.
When the elements are made of a synthetic resin, the elements can be attached to the fastener tape by continuously injection molding them on the tape. The synthetic resin is usually polyoxyethylene (Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2), but materials other than polyoxyethylene have been proposed as a means of improving performance A slide fastener component has been proposed in Patent Document 3 which uses polyester and polyamide to impart the same apparent color to the fabric and the slide fastener when the slide fastener composed of the fabric and the resin components are dyed in the same bath.